Usability is one of the most important factors that affects the user experience of any application, website, or any other piece of software. Usability principles like Visibility, User control, etc. are make or break for many applications. Usability or user-centered design is the process of designing something from the perspective of how it will eventually be used by an actual person. In simple words, usability is the ease with which a user can use a product, or software to perform the core tasks for which the product or software has been created. In this article we will look at what usability and its principles are, what is Usability testing and how can we improve the usability of our application.
What Is Usability?
Usability
Usability or user-centered design is the process of designing something from the perspective of how it will eventually be used by an actual person. in simpler terms, usability is the ease with which a user can use a product, or software to perform the core tasks for which the product or software is created. A product or application that is high on usability makes it easier for the users to understand the interface, operate it, and use it without any difficulty. The three key terms we must know for high usability are effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. In order to design a high usability design, we must make sure that the features we are creating are effective, efficient and lead to user satisfaction.
A useful design is formed by combining two things:
- High Usability: ease with which a user can use a product, of software to perform the core tasks for which the product or software is created.
- High Utility: Solving the user needs and providing the required features
Useful design = High Usability + High Utility
Usability Testing
A Usability study or usability testing or UI/UX testing is actually a research method for assessing how how easy it is for participants to complete the important tasks in a design. During a usability study, participants are provided the designs/products and researchers follow participants when they interact with the product/design. All the feedback from the users is then collected and worked upon.
The user’s feedback helps the design team make important improvements to the user interface and user experience. Usability studies can take place at various points in the design process:
- Stage I: You can conduct a usability study when you have an early idea, this would be like a basic prototype that is just little interactive. this is called concept testing.
- Stage II: You can also conduct a usability study when you have an interactive prototype. This is where most of the designers conduct a study because it gives the design team insight on what needs to be revised or added before the product launches.
- Stage III: You can even conduct a usability study with a product when it is complete. This is done when you may want to change a feature of the product or test if the product is usable with a specific group of people.
Importance of Usability
Importance of usability can be understood in following points:
- User satisfaction: Usability puts user in the center of the design. This helps the design achieve user satisfaction in a way that we know what the user want through usability testing and if ew implement that on our design, user will surely to satisfied with the product, application or the website.
- Increased productivity: User centered design or a highly usable design increases the used productivity which in turn helps the business. Since the user’s productivity is enhanced using our application or website they would want to come back again improving the website’s or the application’s retention.
- Increased profitability: As we discussed in the previous point, since the user’s productivity is enhanced using our application or website they would want to come back again improving the website’s or the application’s retention and the more they come to our website the more are the chances of the spending money. This surely helps the business attain more profits from the customers.
- Balancing User and client needs: Usability really helps to create a healthy balance between the user’s needs and wants, and the client’s needs and wants.
- Reduced training: Highly usable products or software requires lesser training since they are less confusing to the users. This greatly helps the business because since the friction for the user to learn in less, the users will tend to choose your product in comparison to a product that requires more training to understand it.
Steps for Achieving Usability
- Step 1: Firstly, Get clear understanding of users’ goals with User Research (UX). For this we will need to learn who the person is? What is the context of use of the product or service?
- Step 2: Second step to achieve usability is to build User Personas. For that we need to learn who our target user is? What are their needs and goals? And what are their pain-points and challenges?
- Step 3: In the third step we can ideate Solutions to solve the user Problems. This can be done by conducting Ideation sessions to gather different perspectives of different people in the team to uncover the most unexpected and innovative solution to the problem.
- Step 4: Next step is building Prototypes. Building a Prototype helps you to ask questions and take User feedback to bring improvements thus improving the user experience.
- Step 5: Next step is conducting thorough usability testing. We already have discussed how to conduct usability testing.
- Step 6: And the final step is to Iterate. After performing usability testing you will get to know the issues with your design and some more feedback, implement it in your design and continue doing so until a usable design is achieved.
Top Factors that affect Usability
There are 6 very important factors that affect Usability, these six factors are following:
- Intuitive Design
- Ease of Learning
- Efficiency of User
- Memorability
- Error frequency and severity
- Subjective satisfaction
Conclusion
A product or application which is high on usability makes it easier for the users to understand the interface, operate it and use it without any difficulty. And in this digital age, this is what makes all the difference. No matter how beautiful your interface is, if it does not serve its purpose, the user will not come again to your application or your website.